Poetry – Page 3 – Writers Resist

In Pillars, the Prized City

By Maira Faisal

“You ask: What is the meaning of ‘homeland’?

“They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread, and the first sky.

“You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?”

— from In the Presence of Absence by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish

V. Hajj (pilgrimage)
Stare.

Lock your eyes with mine,
my irises your kaleidoscope

to seek the fractal of Palestine,
absorb the reflection of rubble
staining a land of holy sites,

as apathy-plagued publics
state politics aren’t their forte
while forts, any flickers of shelter,
are licked by the blister of flames,

as the meek, soothed, enchanted
by time’s beguiling hands, (too
often) reject martyrs for monsters:
why run from dark, little things
when one can become a reaper?

IV. Sawm (fasting)
Gaze upon Gaza—

setting sun, a crimson cast
on a mother wiping blood off tile
delicately, lovingly, whispering it
is her Muhammad’s, her son’s last

scrubs clinging to a physician
saying postpartum equals
a hysterectomy, not recovery,
axing branches to save trees

small hearts clattering in small rib cages,
pumping—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick
till they still and stop, slumped bodies
exceeding 5,000 in forty days

children, his flesh and soul,
sealed in grocery bags as severed
limbs, sans warmth and dreams,
visit their Papa in his

carpet bomb flashes and
white phosphorus clouds and
climbing death tolls and

hospital attacks and
church bell chimes and

pets sunk in soot and

and

Israeli officials cheer,
soldiers dance,
civilians chant, “Who has no
electricity, food, water?”

because both sides are
blackened, empty-stomached,
longing for civility

but one thinks the other savages
and ravages, yes, one thirsts for water,

the other hungers for blood.

III. Zakat (charity)
The ummah is one:

“When any limb aches,
the whole body reacts
with sleeplessness and fever.”

Boycotts and banners,
we will not mind manners,

and are marching in streets

Warsaw, Ottawa, Rome,
Lahore, Dublin, Washington,
Istanbul, Doha, Eindhoven

posting for peace

#freepalestine
#savegaza
#stopapartheid

forgoing niceties

“There are NO Two Sides to Genocide”
“End the Palestinian Holocaust”
“Bombing Civilians is a War Crime.”

We, the phantom feet of Palestine,
bastions that won’t sterilize speech
nor forget grotesque portraits of grief—

the tempest-tost, we hear,
and offer aid and alms,
support and a salam.

II. Salah (prayer)
Injuries like rotten peach flesh,
cries absconding sinew,

each second expiates sins,
each breath, an act of worship.

Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha’a,
takbir, qiyyam, ruku, sujud, tashahud,

dawn, noon, midday, dusk, nightfall,
stand, recite, bow, prostrate, sit.

Death lies in the sky.
Palestine rises as it’s razed.

I. Shahada (faith)
In wisps, it sinks from welkin,
seething and seizing around
the cracks of the prized city,
lodging into stalled lungs,
a tide, a tether,

a profession of faith,
smile of iman before burial,
another seed of watermelon:
tough as rind, sweet as fruit,

red as a phoenixing dawn,
with a spring-dandelion sun
cawing wondrously,

“From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.”

Stare where, from the debris,
an iris grieves a poppy,

and opens like a cupped palm.

Maira Faisal is a Kentucky Youth Poet Laureate representative, a sophomore at Northern Kentucky University, and a writer. Her work has been recognized by multiple university journals, Hanging Loose Press, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. As a Pakistani American and Muslim, her pieces often address Islamophobia—especially as it relates to current events such as the Palestinian genocide and Kashmiri repression.

Photo credit: Marius Arnesen via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Lonav Ojha

To Refaat Alareer,
who became a kite

Brother, you looked so loving,

holding very gently

that box of

strawberries, and behind

your home, not yet,

not again,

but incessantly

in ruins.

You were not a number,

you were,

an educator,

a cheerful poet,

settler’s boogeyman,

and now that you’re dead, English is also

a language for mourning.

A strike occurs in a medium

it does not

simply

………

….

…

fall.

And your words

hang in air

heavier than any

gravity bombs.¹

1. American

• • • • • • • • • •

A letter to a friend explaining the student movement

I have been listening

to more Bollywood these

days. I have been writing Press Statements

for the Press that does not state what

must be stated. I live in despair. And I

sometimes wish I didn’t have to, but hearing

love songs, Bollywood love songs, without

having anybody to love in a Bollywood sort of way,

means I’m hoping to learn a few things

about romancing myself.

A newly made friend

told me

during the protests that he’s serious about

killing himself, & he was writing

a letter, and another

said she’s cutting herself after many years.

The first person, we don’t talk anymore, because I have

nothing to say.

They’re still alive. I am also still alive.

I am listening to Bollywood songs. I am writing

Press Statements.

I am talking to L, and he says,

the Vice-Chancellor is planning something

HUGE!!

He’s been flying back and forth to Delhi. He,

is a bastard, and I’m listening

to Bollywood songs, and I’m doing alright.

And I’m trying to love my friends, the ones I can,

the ones who can love me.

Long live that look

on your face, and mine. I am

listening to Bollywood

songs, and I’m imagining someone

who would have me fully.

I suffer egregiously from the main character

syndrome. I suffer from having faith

in people. Long live the crane

behind the Magis block that spent a year

building what it will never occupy.

Long live the cats in the New Academic Block

that don’t give a shit. So I am

writing Press Statements. I’ve always

danced in my room,

when nobody’s watching,

when the world is burning,

and I haven’t stopped.

Lonav Ojha is a 22-year-old writer from India. His work has previously appeared on ASAP Art, Agents of Ishq, LiveWire, and The Open Dosa. He was also longlisted for the 2024 TOTO Awards for Creative Writing in English. He writes regularly on his personal blog, Stories Under My Bed, where he attempts to reimagine resistance from the praxis of joy and education. Since the 2014 national elections, his country has plunged into the depths of Hindutva fascism, crushing dissent in all its varied expressions and stifling whatever remained of academic freedom in public universities.

Photo credit: Magne Hagesæter via a Creative Commons license.

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Jannah is a single strand. My father is the complementary prognosticator strand.

By Abdulrazaq Salihu

3’ 5’
Jannah has seven gates. My father is dead. A dirty cutlass
My people would enter through all. Stabbed into his flesh. My father
Jannah is thirsty. Is dead. Gun to the head, bullet
My people are water. Jannah is shahada. To his skull. My father is dead
My people died in sujood. Jannah is a I cannot unsee the terror. A flood
Myth. My people are the fate. Jannah Cleanses itself with my father’s blood
Is the road, my people are the destinations.               My father is dead. Who did this to me
Jannah is a miracle by the mouth of a Father is gone. Gun too soon. Gone.
Wound. My people are casualties. The Lokoja sands open and swallow
Jannah is a gun, my people are bullets. My father, but he’s only gone when I
Shoot your shot or give the gun, Believe. My brother sees Pa in dreams
Jannah is silence. My people I tell him dreams are only dreams until
Are dead. My people are gone. We believe. My father is gone. Jannah
My people are pebbles Is jannah because my father is gone,
The size of light. Jannah Because light left us black,
Is a gift. My people unwrap. Jannah Because my father is a blue light
Is touch. My people: shy flowers, fold. Full of tenderness. My father is dead
Jannah is poison. My people are milk. Jannah is jannah. My father is jannah.
Jannah is black stripe against the skin                       My father is the only door: enter
Of white music. My people are songs. Through shahada. Through my father’s
My people are sins. Jannah is forgiveness. Delicate skin. Jannah is an RNA strand,
Jannah is jannah because my father died.                  My father is the complement.
Jannah needs my father………………………………………My father needs his people.

Jannah is the gap between my thumb and index. My people are songs the size of quiet.
5’ 3’

Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I, is a Nigerian poet and member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation. He won the Splendours of Dawn Poetry Foundation’s poetry contest, BPKW Poetry Contest, Poetry Archive Poetry Contest, Masks Literary Magazine Poetry Award, Nigerian prize for teen authors (poetry), Hilltop Creative Writing Award, and others. He has received fellowships and residencies from IWE Writers Residency, SPRING, and elsewhere. He has work published or forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Unstamatic, Bracken, Poetry Quarterly, Rogue, B’K, Jupiter Review, Black Moon Magazine, Angime, Grub Street, and elsewhere. He tweets @Arazaqsalihu; Instagram, @Abdulrazaq._salihu. He’s the author of Constellations (poetry) and Hiccups (prose).

Photo credit: BBC, under “Fair Use” for commentary.

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Slowcookery

By Amy L. Bernstein

“Because when it comes to truly explaining racial injustice in this country, the table should never be set quickly” – Nikole Hannah-Jones, “What is Owed,” New York Times Magazine, 2020

I stand on the far shore of the fast-moving
Combahee River,
opposite the Collective,

afforded a distant glimpse through a lead-paned window
into a snug, low-slung house on the riverbank where

Barbara, Demita, Beverly,
Sharon, Cheryl, Margo, Gloria
are in the kitchen
crowded hip to hip
making dinner to please themselves

the roast has just gone in to
marinate in its juices,

the carrots and potatoes will grow
fork-tender

but not for hours,
not until the pan is bubbling

I see them drinking wine and dancing
slowly
the river moves fast,
conveying time along wet ribs

and the ever-echoing shots of Harriet’s raid

but inside the house,
all is marination

the womyn are steeped in life—
schooled and schooling others

they slip in and out of the
dining room,

setting the table for dinner
one plate cup fork knife at a time,

for nothing about this meal is
taken for granted,
handed out,
handed over

it is so-so-so not easy
yet will be savored
by them
in their own good time

as the Combahee parades
its flowing witness.

Amy L. Bernstein writes stories, essays, and poems that let readers feel while making them think. Her novels include The Potrero Complex, the award-winning The Nighthawkers, Dreams of Song Times, and Fran, The Second Time Around. Amy’s poetry has appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Loch Raven Review, Lost Boys Press, Parliament Literary Journal, Passaic-Voluspa, She Is Kindred, and elsewhere, and in an anthology chapbook, Baltimore, I (want to) Love You.

Image credit: “Through Forests, Through Rivers, Up Mountains” by Jacob Lawrence 1967, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Editor’s notes:

Read about Harriet Tubman and the Combahee Ferry Raid of 1863.

Read the “Combahee River Collective Statement.”

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The Whale

By Kerry Loughman

never budged

becalmed she was

bleached by sun

& beached on relentless rise

of blue water liquid leeched

from her eyes her orifices

her great mouth agape

her lungs did evaporate

Climate-changed her

wishes drowned

in sand

Kerry Loughman is a retired educator and photographer living in the Boston area. She writes about memory, art, family, and nature in the city, looking for small transient moments of beauty . . . or discord. Her work has appeared in Mass Poetry’s The Hard Work of Hope and Poem of the Moment, Nixes’ Mate, What Rough Beast, The Main Street Rag and is forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review.

Image credit: “The Whale” by Christopher Michel via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Linda Parsons

How a Woman Becomes Herself

When the neighbor’s weed tree drapes over the power lines and shades her garden, she contemplates going out by moonlight to dump salt on the roots—but that could backfire and flow instead into the garden, be its ruination. These good neighbors invite her over for fine smoked brisket and can’t even see the problem from their side, so why doesn’t she just grow a pair and tell them, but she takes the aluminum ladder and reaches to the highest branches she can lop off with her superloppers, so maybe they will see her teetering and mistake her for a dragonfly. Truth be told, she’s out there iridescing for her ownself and no one else, her own muscles braided in the sun, yes, muscles at seventy, her arches hugging the top step, balanced as the scales in her Libra rising, Libra the sign of lovingkindness, and maybe they’ll hear her prayer for a little rain, a prayer that some of the body’s salt sours a root or two—because she’s no old wife in this tale, no wife at all, and who can say how it pours when it rains, how in the end it all comes out in the wash—weed, pride, sweat—all but the wings, or the shadow of wings.

Sassafras

Don’t you be sassafras, my daughter
says to her daughters, and so it goes,
straight from my mother’s shush of seen
and not heard, my mouth not to dispute

her word. Now a woman of a certain age,
word-hunger rages to depths even I
cannot sound, tongue burnt with all
manner of truths: a voice unrecused

to witness, laced with cinnamon bark,
cardamon fire, tea for fatigue and fever.
I speak my palmate self, canopy untold,
oils applied to sting and sprain,

my unquiet seams. I purify the blood,
neither sugar nor spice, but healing sear
for whatever stubborn wound the world
hands out. More than match struck

to tinder, more than knocking on wood’s
door long enough to shatter the walls,
more than sass or backtalk or sulled-up lip
or any tabula rasa, I will be sassafras

and more, all that indisputable more.

Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Baltimore Review, Shenandoah, and American Life in Poetry. Her sixth collection, Valediction, contains poems and prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Image credit: Erich Ferdinand via a Creative Commons license.

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Wildness Unafraid

By Tim Murphy

What if trees could talk?
No. Of course they do.
What if we could hear
them speak
just beneath our feet?

What if birds of all feathers
who lift the sky with song
and frame it with flight
told us
what names to call them?

What if we could simply bathe
in wonder at the coyote’s
wild music of the night,
not needing to demonize
to feel alive?

What if we listened deeply,
heeding the ancient wisdom
of the many worlds unknown
contained in this one
we don’t own?

What if we let other beings
live alongside us
outside the long, lonely shadows

cast by our fear
of our own wildness?

Tim Murphy (he/him) is a disabled civil rights attorney, environmentalist, and poet who lives in Portland, Oregon. His writing explores the natural world, disability, and the climate crisis. Tim’s work is featured in Remington Review, Livina Press, and The Long Covid Reader, a collection published in November 2023. Tim can be found on Instagram and Twitter, @brokenwingpoet.

Image credit: “Howl” by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Wrong Rainbow

By L. Acadia

Describing our droomhuis for Dutch class, my
worksheet filled with my dream house’s garden:
Hollyhocks, hydrangea higher than I,
wrought iron table for morning coffee,
serenading birds, frogs ringing a pond.
My love wrote an interior my mind
couldn’t fit: puppy-claw impervious
tile floors, dormer bedroom, dinner-party
primed kitchen, postprandial dancing space.

Years later, we recall the exercise,
tossing balkon, keuken, venster, fit now
to a dream house: open-plan high-ceilinged
flat—wood beams leading the gaze towards mountains,
snug loft for out-of-town or drunken friends,
green balcony, community garden,
busses to work: a millennial dream.

Rooftop looking out to summer salons
poetry, perhaps acoustic guitar.
Headlights flooding the street below create
a waterfall of light, mist spraying to stars.

We call our droomhuis “Jesus house” for the
forest of crosses, scandalous portraits
of unfashionably long-haired white men with
palm-wounds. The seller greets us cordially,
his wife places hands over their kids’ chests,
as though guarding their hearts from our inter-
racial lesbianism’s tick’ling daggers.

When they ghosted our offer, we enquired
through a new realtor. The Jesus house dad
asked, “are your clients a normal couple?”
Nee.

L. Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University and member of the Taipei Poetry Collective, with poetry in Autostraddle, New Orleans Review, Strange Horizons, trampset, and elsewhere. Twitter and Instagram: @acadialogue

Image credit: Jim Choate via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Deborah Hochberg

Congregation of Ibis

“A barrage of storms has resurrected what was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River, setting the stage for a disaster this spring.”

– from “Tulare Lake Was Drained Off the Map. Nature Would Like a Word,” Soumya Karlamangla and Shawn Hubler, New York Times, April 2, 2023

They drained the Great Lake
in the late 19th century

Humans took
the vast waters from us
to grow their cotton, their tomatoes

Like gods, they separated
the land and the skies from the water
and the water was no more

They came, and they took
what was ours
and we had no say

And they did what they willed
with the earth

And the earth was obedient
for decades, over a century

And then the earth decided —
I have had enough
I am taking it back
I miss the lake
I will bring back the lake

And the atmospheric rivers
raged through the skies

And the land received the waters
waters that the mammoths
once drank

The farms, homes, brewery, and cafe
the crops and ranches
were inundated

And then we returned —
the ibis
and the herons, pelicans, and coots

Soon the snowpack will melt
without mercy
for agriculture
or prisons

The lake, like a surging
aqueous ghost, a watery resurrection
has again staked its claim

And we are here —
as long as the lake
can sustain its deep
irriguous expanse

Migrant Child

Home
is a thing
that does not yet exist
Existed as a point of departure
But a home
where one cannot live
is not a home
My feet are my home
My legs are my home
My sneakers are my home
They carry me
through arduous terrains
that seek to have me
lie down
and sink
into the mud
Mud-child
I hold my own hand
This way, I say
No, this way
Journey of a thousand steps
Countless steps, numerous
as stars in the sky
Stars that blanket me
on cold nights
No longer human
I move through the mud
like a turtle
Did I just crawl
over a border?
I have forgotten
thoughts of home
and now think only
of movement
This journey, a trial
and I am guilty
of what I do not know
Hope
is a thing
that grips you
around your throat
Pulls you
like a leash
and won’t let go

Deborah Hochberg is from Detroit, Michigan, and studied at Wayne State University. She is a musician, a gardener, and a health care provider. She is the author of two collections of poetry entitled Waiting For the Snow and Memory’s Reservoir.

Image credit: Bob Peterson via a Creative Commons license.

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what happened before the good sex

By Bryana Joy

for God’s sake no more games
she said setting the last set
of lace panties in the trash

i am befuddled by all this
rigmarole this muddle this hullabaloo
she threw a negligee out the door
and all of her lipstick tubes

i am i the only one
you are you the only one
my house is as you see it
if you want to come in
Come

Bryana is a poet and illustrator who has lived in Türkiye, Texas, and England, and now resides in Eastern Pennsylvania. Her poetry has appeared in more than 50 literary journals, and her book, Summer of the Oystercatchers, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Since 2021, she has been teaching regular online poetry workshops to foster meaningful arts community and support writers. Find her at www.bryanajoy.com or on Instagram and Threads at @_bryana_joy.

Image credit: Public domain

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that name

By William Palmer

tide in—

imagine
waves scraping away

that name
and the lies upon lies

that feed off it,
dissolving them in foam

imagine
the mugshot gone

the blue suits gone
the long red ties

around our country’s neck
gone

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in JAMA, J Journal, One Art, On the Seawall, Talking River Review, and The Westchester Review. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Image credit: Sean P on Unsplash.

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Point Blank

An Illustrated Poem by Jane Muschenetz

MIT grad and former Bain Management Consultant, Jane Muschenetz arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She is a 2023 City of Encinitas Exhibiting Artist and winner of The Good Life Review 2022 Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay, 2023), was shortlisted for the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize. Jane is Director of Partnerships at San Diego Entertainment & Arts Guild and Co-Founder of the San Diego Chapter of Women Who Submit Lit. Connect with Jane’s work at her website, www.PalmFrondZoo.com, and in various publications. Follow her on social media @PalmFrondZoo.

1 Incident of firearm mortality per 100K population by global developed economies, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-world-comparison/. M.McGough, K. Amin, N. Panchal, C. Cox, “Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries,” KFF.org, Jul, 2022; https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/; USA child+teen data from 2020.

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The Last Revolution

By Lorraine Schein

The Last Revolution was yesterday.
It was so successful, that all future revolutions were cancelled forever.

A lesbian and her lover were elected President and Vice-President.
Their lovemaking is televised nationally as part of the inaugural proceedings
and greeted with applause by an appreciative at-home audience.

Poets have been elected to Congress. It is now a requirement for election to any political office that the candidate be a poet.
Poems are published in every daily newspaper and online.
Headlines announce the dates of public readings and news about famous poets.

Crowds go to hear poets the way they used to go to see rock stars or football games.
They cheer loudly, in iambic pentameter, for their favorite poet.

“I can’t wait to go to tomorrow’s poetry reading!” people say,
and tickets are sold out months in advance.

Work has been abolished by the smashing of clocks and digital time devices.
Now there can be no office work, or work at all, since there is no way
of measuring a workday.

The gods and goddesses return, and run rampant.

Children and animals are allowed to run for president also.
Next election day, a little girl and her teddy bear running-mate
look to be the winning ticket.

For toys have been given equal rights and a voice, too—
in what matters most.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer and poet. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, NewMyths and Michigan Quarterly, and in the anthologies Wild Women and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry collection, is available from Mayapple Press. Her book, The Lady Anarchist Cafe, is available from Autonomedia.

Image credit: Beatrice Murch via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Nancy Squires

As the Waters Rise

O God, look down
On all our drowned.
Hear us, we beg—
We’re on our knees.
Sorry, so sorry
About the trees,

The polar bears, the birds,
The bees; the icebergs
Gone, the thirsty lawns,
Plastic gyres, redwood
Pyres and all the many,
many cars. The eclipsed stars

We never see. Our Father
In Heaven, we pray
To Thee: Give us
This day.
We promise, oh we swear
On a stack of extinctions

We will repair
Our awful ways
And lead us not into oblivion
Although we can’t pretend
We had no clue. Save us
Now—before
Amen.

It’s No Use, Ron DeSantis

Before Marie Kondo-ing
I had a pile of beads
in a drawer, cheap baubles
from Gay Prides past:
Chicago, where the crowd spilled
into Halsted, slowing the procession
to a crawl; New York,
where drag queens rode the floats
in headdresses three feet tall
just like Carnival; and Boston,
many years—the one
where Kevin was The Little Mermaid
on the Disney float—his costume
(which he stitched himself),
perfection and his makeup,
animated glam. That woman on the Harley
who dyed her mohawk rainbow
every year, and the time
Sally spotted her coworker
coming down the route—
she was surprised to see him
in a wine-colored corset.
No beads
from Lansing, Michigan,
my first Pride—not
a parade but a march
and what got thrown
at us were insults, curses, glares
from people holding signs
that said God hated us.
So let’s say gay
and everything else
there is to say.
I should’ve kept that pile
of shiny plastic beads—
not sure if it was joy
they sparked but something—
Kevin reclining up there
amongst the other Disney folk
his shimmery mermaid tail
sparkling in the morning sun.
Say it: gay.
All the livelong day.
She and he and them
and they: we
aren’t going back
inside the boxes.

Nancy Squires is a writer, lawyer, and freelance copy editor. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Dunes Review, Split Rock Review, and Blueline Magazine. She grew up, and currently resides, in Michigan.

Photo credit: Linda De Volder via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Crying in Texas

By M.R. Mandell

after “Kissing” by Dorianne Laux

Crying as they hope for blood,
crying as they flush the strips,
crying as they hide their bumps.
They are crying in bathroom stalls,
behind Sugarland’s Kroger store.
They are crying on Houston corners,
outside the boarded-up laundromat.
They are crying in each other’s arms,
at the Hampton Inn off Highway 10.
They are crying in their Walmart
uniforms, and their Ann Taylor
suits, in their Wrangler jeans,
and Zara boots. They are crying
alone, on the edge, salt burning
their skin. They are crying as doctors
turn them away. They are crying
harder than before,
before the pious Robes lied.
Crying as they hope for blood.

M.R. Mandell (she/her) is a poet living in Los Angeles. A transplant from Katy, Texas, she now lives by the beach with her muse, a Golden Retriever named Chester Blue (at her feet), and her longtime partner (by her side). You can find her work in Chill Subs, Boats Against the Current, The Final Girl Bulletin Board, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Bloom, JAKE, Roi Fainéant, sage cigarettes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stanchion Zine, Fine Print and others. She has works forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, unstamatic (photo), and Olney Magazine (photos)

Photo credit: Ernesto Andrade via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Montana

By Jeremy Nathan Marks

For Zooey Zephyr

The big sky fifty-mile
vistas where the Greasy Grass runs
willowed valleys sweeping memory
from the water to the sky an arrow long
ago fired but whose arc is heard
surely this land can contain one woman
who says of our laws that while we pray
to remain humbled that blood in our palms
is a great glacier melting as though we were
the sun.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. He is the author of the collection, Of Fat Dogs & Amorous Insects (Alien Buddha, 2021). He holds two passports and does not maintain a social media presence.

Photo credit: Michael Bourgault on Unsplash.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

The first day of cherry season,

By Emily Hockaday

the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is
wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick
my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors
sit next to their colorful carts like the world
isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now
or it is just very slowly. And what did
the vendors do at Pompeii? Skewer meat
and sling it under an eerie sky. I bring home
3 lbs of the jeweled fruits. The sun
is the same bright pink behind the haze—
a Rainier cherry hanging above us.
My daughter is studying wildfires
at school, or perhaps just the lifecycles
of trees. She tells me forest fires can be good
for the Earth, right? Because redwood seeds
need fire to grow. Our hallway smells
of smoke from the skylight. We move inside
a yellow cloud. Even as the air quality
outside becomes a disaster, we make plans
to cap our stove’s gas line. I think of
my daughter’s new pink lungs.
I was reckless with mine, but hers
are pristine, and I want to preserve them.
I imagine her serotinous redwood cones
cracking in the heat. I hope that’s
what humanity will do too. Crack
so that seeds release. At night
I roll a towel against her window.
The fires can only burn for so long.

Emily Hockaday’s second collection, In a Body, an ecopoetry collection with themes of parenting, chronic illness, and grief, is coming out in October 2023 with Harbor Editions. Her debut, Naming the Ghost, was released with Cornerstone Press in 2022. She has received grants from the City Artists Corp, Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, the De Groot Foundation, and the NYFA Queens Art Fund. She is a fellow with the Office Hours Poetry workshop and was a 2022 resident at Bethany Arts Community.

Photo credit: Denise Kitagawa via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

The Lure of Socks on Warm Feet

By Amelia Díaz Ettinger

Never forget, September 20, 2017 and Maria

In my La-Z-Boy I sit, a Puerto Rican queen,
feet-up admiring my knitted socks.
I made these socks by knit and purl.
5,746 miles away from you
it is easy to say, I worship.

—And oh! How I preach this veneration,

the warmth of pale green light
the whiteness of sand
the contrast of ocean currents
the dwarf forest, and the crowded towns—

Yet, the truth can’t be changed—I left.
Abandon your Central Cordillera for the Blues,
an exchange of choice, not necessity.

I saw the hurricane while wearing star-banded socks,
glued to a television where electricity is constant,
three hot meals a day, sitting at home.
There were no cold cuts day after bloody day,

no Samaritan truck around the corner,
no spoils of mud, and expiring life
no kitchens without a roof
no bottled water in locked warehouses
the trees bare of leaves, not a single flower
petals can’t contain the hurts.

That September, out my window,
the meadow was full of lupines.
Purple or gold,
their curious heads sat one on top of another
a soft pyramid greening gently in the breeze.
The sight of those flowers,
a hurricane of shame.

Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press, and a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, and she has an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Oregon University. Presently, she and her partner reside in Summerville, Oregon, with two dogs, two cats, and too many chickens.

Photo credit: Carissa Bonham via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Ho’oponopono

By Kelsey D. Mahaffey

“In the book of the earth, it is written:
nothing can die.” – Mary Oliver

The morning after it happens
again—weary with all
the thoughtless use of prayer,
I return to the Native path—

for solace,
for remembrance,
for release—

But grief is a heavy hold.

Last night, I lay awake
searching each shooting
star—the moon a wound
the sky refused to heal.

And today, as usual, the sun
woke from bended knees—
rising to break
the long hush of night.

So many have left
to hunt for arms—
answers or anger,
who can say? All around,

there are islands of dew
gathering the spring fields,
birds busy with work—
children still to feed.

Forgive us.

Somehow, a worn cradle of
moon still rocks—heaving waves
upon the shore. A ground dust dances
in the merciful arms of wind.

Dearest Mother,
if we ever choose to weep,
let it be tuned to the depths
of your whale’s forgotten song.

Kelsey D. Mahaffey rests her head in Nashville, TN, but keeps half her heart in New Orleans. She needs music and nature like breath and water, and walks the earth barefoot beside three humans and a bow-legged cat. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in: Eunoia Review, Cumberland River Review, The Sunlight Press, and “The Keeping Room” at Minerva Rising Press.

Photo credit: Debbie Hall, photographer and author, and Writers Resist poetry editor.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Two Poems

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By Camille Lebel

[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” hundred_percent_height=”no” hundred_percent_height_scroll=”no” hundred_percent_height_center_content=”yes” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_2″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” link=”” target=”_self” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” hover_type=”none” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” padding=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no”][fusion_text]The First Time, Reclaimed

I choose
the boy who calls every night to discuss a million nothings, our voices hushing
when my mother picks up the line. Sitting behind me in history, watching footage
of the earth imploding, his finger traces the one-inch ribbon of skin exposed
between low-rise denim and a too-tight tee. That one feather touch infusing
recognition of the word, want.

Free
we stitch trust together with running words. We reject awkward Applebee’s dinners, school dances, roaring football games. We find ourselves on sun-soaked park benches, breathing being. We do not perform piety at Sunday morning services, seeking parental approval. From one another, we require no promises of forever to embrace the now.

Shameless
we make informed preparations. We walk the fluorescent-lit aisles of the corner pharmacy,
no repentant red-cheeked glow burning our faces. He asks for explicit consent again.
And again. The night I soak sorrows in Absolut oblivion is not the time. He knows
a lack of protest is not an invitation. Yes. is not always yes.

Vulnerable
when the time comes, we pretend no prowess. We ask questions and listen to answers.
Entwined fingers move together into uncertainty. We explore with intention the paths between flesh and bone. We laugh at frequent fumbles. Eyes bright, he looks at all I am.
I name my needs without hesitation. Less. More. No. Yes.

Gentle
is the joining. Not two falcons spiraling toward the earth, all adrenaline in panicked plummet.
More clematis exploring the garden arbor until deep violet abounds, boards and blooms reaching skyward to the sun. More steady drip of the leaky kitchen faucet. Soft beads
falling patient, steady, until the sink overflows.

Empowered
I have no regrets. My worth is neither the presence or absence of this. I do not pray
for absolution. No aching knots choking my throat. My soul remains snow-pure. Intact.
Content, I turn into the man still beside me, and we sleep. The following day, he remembers
to speak to me.

Vocabulary Lessons

My son renounces simple language.

Pleading for syllables, his toddler tongue fumbles; focused persistence finding purchase

between jaws, biting into hard consonants with pearly milk-teeth.

He is ravenous for vowels rolling soft across his lips. Furious to be denied another

sweet. Dismayed at skinned flesh of a knee fresh-scraped across pavement.

Twinkling stars? Luminescent. Tiny fingers tying shoes? Infuriated. Plastic dinosaurs

make way for ichthyosaurus, velociraptor, paleontologist: his future endeavors.

I revel in sharing the sweetest delicacies: compassion, community, restoration, justice.

But his palate must abide bitter pills and unsavory days; already

he learns to name villains: avarice, prejudice, ignorance, exclusion. Dropping

succulent words into his open mouth, I offer phonemic morsels on a platter

praying they become blades to chisel hard hearts, transform myopic visions, demolish

fear with a clear, crisp voice speaking life abundant.

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Camille Lebel, educator and mother to seven, lives on a small hobby farm outside of Memphis. She’s published or forthcoming in Hidden Peak Press, Rogue Agent Journal, Literary Mama, Sledgehammer Lit, Black Fox Literary Magazine, ONE ART, Inkwell, and more. She enjoys traveling, horse-whispering, and eating dessert first. She largely writes in the school car-line as a way to process special needs parenting, child loss, and religious trauma. You can find her on Instagram @clebelwords.

Photo credit: “Clematis.” by Free the Image via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

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